Basicpolicy.com
GREEN CARD POLICY 1) Policy Problem: a) What are the problems that the policy tries to solve? Green Card policy started to be implemented on the third of July in 1992 with the publication of the law number 3816 in the Official Newspaper. The policy tries to solve the problems of the poor sections in the country about health issues. Of course the term ‘poor’ creates a problem here, how can the government understand who is poor or what is the limit of being poor? There were news about the people that died because they had not enough money for medical treatment for years; the policy is trying to solve this problem. Government felt itself responsible to find a solution to this problem and with the formation of this law it seems that the problem is solved; but as this is a multi-dimensional process and have very difficult aspects to control during the implementation, it is not absolutely true that the problem is definitely solved. b) What is the significance of that problem? People dying because of being poor is an issue that no one can agree and accept. As Turkey is trying to be a member of European Union for a long time, this problem was affecting turkey’s position and value in the eyes of European countries, because the level of this number of people dying because of this reason is very low in that countries compared to our country. It is also a matter of human rights, as we know every human being have a right to live and if they die because of unacceptable reasons it is a violation of that right. So we can see that the problem is very important because the life of an individual is thing we are talking about. At first sight as the problem is very significant the green Card policy seems to deal with the issue successfully, but as I said before lots of problems occurred during the implementation of this policy. 2) Policy Objectives: What are the initial aims and goals of the policy? The main aim of the policy is to cover the medical treatment costs of citizens of Turkish Republic by government who have no other social security and is unable to pay for their own medical treatment costs. Of course there are other conditions for these people, first of all these people’s monthly income should be less than one third of the minimum wage in the country after subtracting the lowest income tax and the social security premium from that wage. As the latest minimum wage is 160 million TL in the country we can reach approximately a number less than 50 million TL. So if a person’s monthly income is less than 50 million TL and has no other social insurance such as SSK, Bağ-Kur and etc, he or she can apply to have a Green Card and after some investigation if the conditions are really satisfied that person can get a Green Card. From that point on his or her medical costs will be covered by government. 3) Policy Instruments: Which policy instruments are used in the policy? Governments select variety of instruments to implement their policies; here in this Green Card policy we can see some of them. There are three kinds of policy instruments, one of them is voluntary instruments, but here in this policy we cannot see a voluntary instrument as the problem is very complex, hard to control and implement also needs professional knowledge. As this is the case families or voluntary organizations cannot deal with the problem alone. Another type of instrument is Compulsory Instruments where the target individuals and firms have almost nothing to say. In the Green Card policy we can see the regulations as a compulsory instruments. First of all, there is a law about this policy, law number 3816 and in this law we can see the aim of the policy, its content, basic principles and penalties when there is a violation of law and etc. Also there is a regulation issued by Ministry of Health after the publication of the law from which people with green Card learns which hospitals or health agencies they will apply in order when there is a need.